Book Party Celebrates Women in STEM

March 26, 2015

Science Club for Girls book launch party recognizes the power of female mentors.

On March 19, the Simmons Institute for Leadership and Change hosted a book launch party to celebrate the book Magnificent Minds: 16 Pioneering Women in Science and Medicine by author Penny Noyce. The new book recognizes the power of female role models for girls in science.

The launch party featured a panel discussion about the book and the importance of mentors. The book includes information about groundbreaking women in science such as: Florence Nightingale, who pioneered the use of statistics in public health; Marie Curie, the only person to have won the Nobel Prize in both physics and chemistry; and Lise Meitner, the first physicist who explained nuclear fission.

The panel included author Penny Noyce; Lonsdale Koester, Science Club for Girls (SCFG) executive director; Elizabeth Scott, Simmons College biology professor and SCFG mentor; and Nadwa Ibrahim ’18, recent SCFG alumna. They spoke about the pioneering women in Noyce’s book and the significance of role models.

“That’s exactly what Science Club for Girls does—girls are doing real science, supported by mentors who are high school, college and graduate students, and professional women—just like them,” said Koester.

Ibrahim ’18 shared her own experiences in SCFG beginning in sixth grade, with a Simmons College senior as a mentor. Both worked and learned in Scott’s laboratory at Simmons.